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I received my MA in philosophy of science many years ago and currently reviving my academic interests. I hope to stimulate individuals in the realms of science, philosophy and the arts...to provide as much free information as possible.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Gold, silver--invest in...

Silver, gold--invest in brokers, smelters, mining facilities and not the physical product. New nanotecnologies and materials will open up a new demand for silver and gold.

"Silver, Gold Makes for Cheap, Flexible Touch Screens"

These new touch screens could come hot off the presses using the same machinery that prints newspapers.

by

Eric Bland

Monday May 24th, 2010

DiscoveryNews

Cheap, flexible touch screens made with silver and gold nanowires could soon be rolling off the presses and into cell phones, computers and more. The same technology could even be used in solar panels.

Writing in the journal ACS Nano, scientists from Stanford University say the new technology could be "immediately" used in consumer electronics.

"It's a roll-to-roll process, just like printing newspapers," said Yu Cui, a scientist at Stanford University and co-author of the paper. "It's extremely fast and can be done at a very low cost."

Today, most touch screens and solar panels are glass-based. The hard, insulating glass helps protect and support the thin coating of electrically conductive metals. But glass is also brittle and heavy. When an object strikes a solar panel, or a person drops a cell phone, the glass can shatter.

Touch screens made from thin plastic coated with silver and gold would weigh less, take up less volume, be more flexible and could be produced much more quickly than glass plates -- up to 100 times faster in fact.

Even though the screens are made with silver and gold, they are still cheap, said Cui. The total amount of precious metals in each screen is so small that it doesn't significantly increase the price.

The connections between the silver nanowires are good, but not great, said Cui. His group managed to improve the electrical conductivity of the nanowires by fusing them together with tiny amounts of gold. The team is also trying to create longer, thinner silver nanowires, which will make the screen even more transparent and improve conduction of electricity through them.

The thin metal mesh formed by the nanowires is flexible and sticks to a variety of materials. When applied to plastic, the material can be bent, flexed or dropped, and the screen won't crack and will still conduct an electrical charge.

That's a far cry from many glass-based touch screens, which have an unfortunate tendency to shatter on impact.

The silver nanowires could also be used as electrodes for solar cells that can turn light into electricity, said Cui. Flexible silver and gold nanowire screens could replace the hard, glass-based electrodes.

Unlike many technologies that have a significant lag time between development and application, Cui says his technique could be used "immediately." The same machines that produce tons of newspapers every day could instead assemble rolls and rolls of touch screens and electrodes for solar panels.

Other scientists agree that the consumers will likely soon see the research in a variety of devices.

"It's certainly important and interesting research," said Younan Xia, a scientist at Washington University in St. Louis not involved in the study. "The products that come from this technology will be very useful."

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Annus mirabilis-1905 March is a time of transition winter and spring commence their struggle between moments of ice and mud a robin appears heralding the inevitable life stumbling from its slumber it was in such a period of change in 1905 that the House of Physics would see its Newtonian axioms of an ordered universe collapse into a new frontier where the divisions of time and space matter and energy were to blend as rain and wind in a storm that broke loose within the mind of Albert Einstein where Brownian motion danced seen and unseen, a random walk that became his papers marching through science reshaping the very fabric of the universe we have come to know we all share a common ancestor a star long lost in the eons of memory and yet in that commonality nature demands a permutation a perchance genetic roll of the dice which births a new vision lifting us temporarily from the mystery exposing some of the roots to our existence only to raise a plethora of more questions as did the papers of Einstein in 1905